[Guardian] Heroic Shamans, tanking Haromm with no healer. Help.

Our raid has decided to 2 heal and 3 tank heroic Shamans. What we're trying is sending the two tanks with Haromm up the hill without a healer so that both heals can stay on the ground with Kardris. I got picked to go up the hill. The other tank on Haromm is a blood DK. I'm looking for any advice(apart from its a stupid strat don't do it) for tanking Haromm. I switched to DoC for the healing boost, I still have gift but I'm not sure if CW would be better. I'm finding I'm having to almost spam FR on myself, even when not tanking, which is eating a lot of my rage and making getting SD up very hard which just makes me use FR all the more. This is my alt so I could be panicking and messing up the rotation so I'll provide logs for people to look at. I'll also provide a link to my armory. Any other question just ask and I'll answer if possible.

If you're going to make a post saying why doing the fight this way is a bad idea thank you, I know, people have already said it, I knew before I started this thread but I can't change the strat. Save yourself the time and don't post.

I mean if you guys want to intentionally make the fight harder you can do that but there really is no point in doing that. If you were going to two heal like this I'd say send them up the hill. Most of the damage done by Kardris is avoidable. The only thing you would need to worry about is the iron prisons. You should just have one healer bottom and one top. I can't think of any situation where the bottom would be taking so much damage to warrant two healers.

Originally Posted by Uggorthaholy

Thanks but no thanks, Lora, for making me question everything in existence forever.

Originally Posted by Damajin

Yes but then again I believe in both the rational and irrational, and definitely think there's more to existence than just this life. People don't have to like it or agree and I don't have to care.

Definitely go DoC, but I would also suggest dumping all of your rage into Frenzied Regen, because Haromm's Frost strikes cannot be dodged or parried, so the best you can do is save rage so you can heal immediately following each strike. I tank it every week and I don't bother with Savage Defense, the melee hits are not the major portion of the damage.

What class is your other tank? If it's a paladin, you can have him spec Hand of Purity, so he can use it on whoever has threat when they get the Nature debuff.

That said it's a stupid strat don't do it. We one heal Kadriss every week.

P.S. Also looking at your Armory, I have a feeling you might be over the Crit cap when you're raid buffed and in Bear Form. It isn't a bad stat even once you're capped, so you may not want to change your gemming at all, but on a fight like that, a little more Mastery might not help, particularly if you're already crit capped.

you either go 3 tanks 1 healer or 2 healers and 3 tanks with split healers... no point in going 2 healers downstairs.
Also solo tanking kadris is possible too. Not too sure how it works, but makes it quite simple as haromm has easier spells to deal with.

Thanks for the quick responses, yes I do realize that it a very stupid idea to do the fight this way. Unfortunately I have NO SAY in how we are doing the fight. I don't even get a vote, so I would very much appreciate it if people could limit their response to things that would be useful for doing the strat as I previously outlined. Not trying to be an ass just trying to stop a page of people telling me what I already know. I was told how they want me to tank and I'd like to do it as well as possible.

Thanks for the quick responses, yes I do realize that it a very stupid idea to do the fight this way.

Well, if you actually want the boss to ever die, do what little you can do to make them rethink the strategy, because having no healers on Haromm will be extremely difficult while having more people on Kadris actually just makes Kadris more difficult. The easiest approach is to have one tank, one healer and one ranged DPS on Kadris and everyone else on Haromm.

I apologize for wasting your time saying what you already know, but it's hard to see that title and not drop by to say that whoever came up with that strategy simply doesn't understand how the fight works, at least not from a healing point of view. It's not a hard fight at all if done right.

Well, I don't think I'm alone when I say the strat is horrid. Regardless, can you tell us why your raid leader wants to do it this way? If we can provide a compelling argument for you, it should be more helpful than providing specifics for this strat.

That being said, after browsing the logs, there's quite a few things going wrong that will make life miserable. As it looks, the entire raid is down with Kardris and the two healers, but there are constantly deaths to Iron Prisons and Tombs. Being tanks for Haromm is still no excuse to get hit by Tombs, they're pretty easy to see and you don't have positional requirements to worry about when it comes to DPS and healers (especially if you find yourself needing to heal up way too often, but being alone gets you targeted with many mechanics you don't normally experience). From the logs, you seemed to switch in a Disc priest in later attempts, but still had people dying to Iron Prisons... but honestly, people were standing where they shouldn't and probably popping shields prematurely (which could be a tank positioning probably, can't really tell, but there were lots of tornado and green spewing deaths). The TL;DR version is that almost everyone, including the tanks are standing in things they should rarely or never be hit by... and even if this strat is a little convoluted in itself, it's pointless if people are still getting hit by every mechanic they should not.

From the bear side of things, I suppose the level 90 talents are a personal choice still... I still cringe at using a GCD for HT and its randomness, but if it's keeping your co-tank alive it may be a necessary evil (I personally prefer NV still). I don't know if you were switching between SotF and Incarnation, but there were long attempts where Incarnation was vastly underused or not used at all.

Also, defensive CDs were highly underused, and I could see that their use/timing would make you need to use FR more often or so often to sacrifice SD usage. The CD on Barkskin is so low (lowered by your Vial trinket even more) that it's shameless not to use it as often as possible or pretty much on cooldown, with the caveat of strategic use... even if you aren't actively tanking and have a DoT on you, no reason not to reduce the damage you take. From the logs you could easily double your use of Barkskin (or even quadruple for some attempts).

You may have a personal method of using major CDs for certain situations, but if the complaint is that there's too much damage to where you need to use FR over SD constantly, there should be more or some usage. From the logs, it appeared that SI/MoU were used at inconsistent times, but there is a reoccurring theme: they're not being used when your chance of death or spike damage is highest. If they were even used, they tended to expire prior to the application of higher stacks of Froststorm Strike, which should be the biggest threat to your survival... using them so they persist through stacks 4 and 5 at the bare minimum will alleviate a lot of burst damage. Using your major CDs in this fashion, along with more use of Barkskin and Incarnation should allow higher uptime on SD and less dependence on FR beyond occasional use... more Tooth and Claw usage will be allowed and help, as well (especially for your co-tank).

So, the short version of everything: while the strat may not be the best, everyone in the raid is getting hit consistently by mechanics they should not... and as a bear tank, there's much room for improvement with defensive CD usage that should help improve survivability, increase SD uptime while reducing FR dependence, and potentially help your co-tank out. Also, I'd still like to hear your raid leader's reason for this specific strat, if you can provide it, as I'm sure fellow bears would like to help out in that aspect, as well.

Well, if you actually want the boss to ever die, do what little you can do to make them rethink the strategy, because having no healers on Haromm will be extremely difficult

If by "extremely difficult" you mean "pretty easy", then yeah, sure. It's dependent on the tanks and challenges something that isn't usually challenged, but by no means is it difficult to do. Tanks don't seem to be dying first, at least in the longer attempts that I'm looking at.

Switch the DK over to conversion if he's having issues. Melee damage should be near 0 for him, and conversion does wonders for countering the slow, inexorable magic damage. DoC is also the best idea for helping him out, although it isn't benefiting you all that much.

For you, don't worry about SD at all. Seriously, his melee damage is pitiful, ~35% of the damage you're taking overall and an even smaller portion of damage spikes, so using SD is pretty much always a bad idea. The only time it could be intelligent is if you A: can have it up for one of the later froststorm strikes (~stack 4 or 5) and B: you will still be at full health for the strike even wasting 60 rage on SD. That doesn't happen frequently.

Barkskin every time you're tanking for the later stacks. Use your other CDs as needed: I like to save MoU/SI until I burn a cloak proc and have to be careful until it's back up, or if they're still free for when I'm tanking during bloodlust. It might also help to sym the DK for bone shield; an extra 10% reduction for a froststorm strike, or just a little bonus in between tanking (don't expect it to make much of a difference, though). Berserk/Inc I found myself using to try and force DoC procs for my cotank more than anything else, but they're helpful anytime you're having rage issues.

If by "extremely difficult" you mean "pretty easy", then yeah, sure. It's dependent on the tanks and challenges something that isn't usually challenged, but by no means is it difficult to do. Tanks don't seem to be dying first, at least in the longer attempts that I'm looking at.

That's the point: the more people you have in the Kadris group, the harder Kadris becomes. If you're having problems with people dying on Kadris, the last thing you want to do is move more people to that group. Having only the tanks on Haromm just makes the whole fight much messier and much harder than it has to be.

That's the point: the more people you have in the Kadris group, the harder Kadris becomes. If you're having problems with people dying on Kadris, the last thing you want to do is move more people to that group. Having only the tanks on Haromm just makes the whole fight much messier and much harder than it has to be.

Iron prison: still limited 2 people
Toxic Storm: More people to fail and get hit by it... although it's mostly a ranged thing anyway and you always have all ranged down there anyway
Foul geyser: Arguably easier with more ranged, though you always have that many ranged down there anyway
Falling Ash: Okay, so technically there are more people hit by it, but you can easily afford to 2-heal downstairs if you need to.

We ended up on this strat because we had 2 healers available total, and trying to 1-heal haromm was infinitely harder than just doing this. It's not a difficult strat and isn't what's wiping them unless the tanks on Haromm are the ones dying. Put another way, anyone actually dying on Kardriss with 8 people there will almost certainly still die on Kardriss with 5 people there; the best they can hope for is putting the people who can't do storms/etc. up at Haromm. Whether that would actually help depends on their healer situation.

We ended up on this strat because we had 2 healers available total, and trying to 1-heal haromm was infinitely harder than just doing this. It's not a difficult strat and isn't what's wiping them unless the tanks on Haromm are the ones dying. Put another way, anyone actually dying on Kardriss with 8 people there will almost certainly still die on Kardriss with 5 people there; the best they can hope for is putting the people who can't do storms/etc. up at Haromm. Whether that would actually help depends on their healer situation.

It's one of the harder aspects of 10mans: comp, comp, comp! When we were doing this with our alt group on 10man, it's definitely a different beast than 25man (well, most encounters are). Another aspect of of H Shamans is that the number of people and the class/spec changes how mechanics behave, especially by Haromm. However, we two-healed it with a resto shammy and disc priest split between two even groups of people, and the hardest part was adjusting the group to get mechanics to behave in a not-so-wonky manner... one solution is just leaving the tanks by themselves to just shove all the mechanics towards the tanks.

While I personally feel the evenly split groups is easier even with two healers, it's possible to leave the tanks to their own devices and clump the group together with Kardris. The downside is that it requires skillful play by the tanks compared to giving them a healer, and if the raid group is getting hit by every avoidable mechanic under the sun (including tanks) there's no real advantage other than potentially removing mechanics for the raid to not have to worry about. That being said, the major problem seen in the logs is people dying to avoidable mechanics, and if this strategy was made to reduce the amount of mechanics people have to avoid, it's not working.

It wasn't on purpose, but I've actually two-tanked Haromm with no healer a few times (foul stream + tombs on DC'd people = boom) on one of my lesser-geared druids alts. As Braindwen says, it's really not hard as a Guardian, however I will contest that there's no reason to not have optimal SD uptime with how much rage we (and the OP) have. Melee damage is the primary source of damage on H Shamans, there's no reason not to avoid it, especially if the primary concern is that the damage intake is too high. Yes, cooldown usage, especially Barkskin usage, should be much better, but not using SD to avoid damage makes the damage taken much spikier.

If you need to resort to FR-spamming while tanking Haromm with no healer frequently, the problem is that you're getting hit too often by other sources of damage... sure, it may be unavoidable at times even with SD, but it should reduce the frequency of the need of FR since the largest source of damage that can be reduced/avoided is melee auto-attacks (SD + T&C together is really what makes the melee damage trivial). I've found, though, that once you have to start FR-spamming, it's very hard to return to SD usage without a damage break.

As a little aside, I looked at the heroic Iron Juggernaut logs to look for some patterns, and the lack of SD/Barkskin/Incarnation/<insert active-use ability> usage is very evident. There's vast room for improvement on the part of the bear tank in question, and that may solve the heroic Shammies issues being had since there is no healer present to back up the tank.